Toward the end of The Carpenter’s Tools ministry, Judy and I became involved in a church plant in Milford, N.J., the very church we will be having our reunion picnic and concert in October. We have been actively involved there for the last 28 years, where I have had the privilege of leading the Praise Team for most of that time. The make-up and style of music is of that group is very similar to that of the Tools, so I have been leading a praise band (traveling and now stationary) for the past 44 years.

For my entire Tool life I worked for Roche in Belvidere, N.J. Ray Oostdyk got me my interview there, and later I met and worked with Dave Alleger in the Safety Department. In 2000 I had a forced retirement from Hoffmann La-Roche. After continuing as a consultant at Roche for two years, I began my second career working for BeyondPay, a payroll company in Clinton owned by church friends of ours. A few years later, Judy joined me there working part time. She stopped working in June 2013 to care for her mom who had open heart surgery and later fell and broke her hip. I retired early last year.

We sold our house in Williams Township in October 2013 with the idea of moving somewhere south once I retired. When Judy’s mom broke her hip, Judy renovated the ground level floor of her house into a very comfortable apartment where her mom still lives. After we sold our house, we moved into the upstairs area so Judy could care for her. Although originally we thought this would be very temporary, we are still living there today and all of our furniture and belongings have been in storage. This arrangement has worked well for Judy’s mom, her siblings and for us, and Judy’s mom is doing very good and gets out almost every day of the week.

Our children both live far away. Danny moved to Seattle in 1996 and later to Long Beach, California. He works for a health care company managing an IT group that develops mobile apps for clients. Jeff and Jenn and their five children, live in Amarillo, Texas where Jeff is an FBI agent.

The Carpenter’s Tools were a very big part of our life for 17 years, and we are very much looking forward to seeing everyone in October who shared in that ministry.